This post is being updated as we receive more information on the incident.

An AirAsia flight with 162 people on board is missing after losing contact with air traffic control. Authorities have initiated search and rescue operations, but these have been suspended overnight and will resume in the morning.

Flight QZ8501 last had contact with air traffic control at 7:24 am local time (11:24 pm GMT) on Dec. 28, shortly after taking off from the Indonesian city of Surabaya.

“The aircraft was on the submitted flight plan route and was requesting deviation due to enroute weather before communication with the aircraft was lost while it was still under the control of the Indonesian Air Traffic Control (ATC),” AirAsia said in a statement at 5:23 am GMT on Dec. 28, or about six hours after it last made contact with authorities on the ground. An Indonesian government spokesman added that the plane had…

CAIRO — As the bodies were claimed, one-by-one, volunteers used marker pens to scribble names on to the white shrouds that covered their faces.

[np_storybar title=”Kelly McParland: Egyptian slaughter shows West has bungled away influence” link=”http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/08/15/kelly-mcparland-egyptian-slaughter-shows-western-leaders-have-bungled-away-influence/”]
If there ever was an optimistic moment for the future of democracy in the post-Arab Spring Middle East, it certainly died in the military crackdown on protesters Wednesday that saw at least 525 people killed. The failure of Egypt’s first fling at democracy holds the dubious honour of being bad news for almost everyone, from Egyptians who thought military rule was a thing of the past, to regional leaders who supported the democratic experiment, to western powers looking for Egyptian stability.

Villagers beat young man and his relatives, as well as burn their crops and press charges.

SHEIKHUPURA, Pakistan, October 11 (CDN) — A young Christian has been jailed for nearly eight months and his family was attacked after a Muslim friend framed him for murder, he said.

Yassir Masih, 18, has been locked up at Sheikhupura District Jail since his arrest in late February. In an interview at Narang Mandi police station at that time, Masih said that on Feb. 17 his Muslim friend Muhammad Mubashir came to his house late at night and asked him to accompany him on “an urgent piece of work.”

Residents of Pandori village in Sheikhupura district, Mubashir and Masih went to the home of Muhammad Imran, who was in love with the same girl as Mubashir; Masih said the two one-time friends often quarreled over her, with bitter enmity eventually developing between them.

“Being a friend, I went with him, reluctantly, and we soon arrived at the door of Muhammad Imran,” Masih said. “Muhammad Mubashir knocked on the door, and as soon as Muhammad Imran opened the door, Muhammad Mubashir opened fire with his pistol, killing Muhammad Imran on the spot.”

The gunfire awakened villagers, who gathered and began to search for the killer, Masih said. Frightened of the mob and not wanting to put his family in danger, Masih did not return home but fled with Mubashir. The two young men hid in a field of crops, where they decided to leave the village until passions cooled, he said. As Masih left the village, however, he was unaware that Mubashir had melted into the mob that was looking for the killer, he said.

“Later Muhammad Mubashir went to his house and slept in his warm bed that shivering cold winter night,” Masih said.

The next day villagers discovered Masih was missing and therefore accused him of killing Imran, he said.

They didn’t stop at that, said Khalid Gill, chief organizer for Punjab Province of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance. Gill said that in order to deprive the wealthy Christian family of their profitable strawberry, wheat, corn and other crops, Mubashir’s father, Muhammad Gulfam, filed murder, arms possession and terrorism charges not only against Masih but also against his 50-year-old father Abid Masih, as well as brothers Khalid Masih, 30; Asif Masih, 23; Ashir Masih, 15; Faisal Masih, 13; and two others unnamed.

“Most of the Muslims in the area harbored jealousy against the prosperous Christian family,” Gill pointed out, explaining why Gulfam also pressed charges against members of Yassir Masih’s family.

Additionally, the angry villagers on Feb. 18 overran the property of Masih’s grandfather, Rehmat Masih, where four of the late patriarch’s sons lived; the mob beat women and children with clubs and looted appliances, clothes and other household items, Gill said.

“Nothing was left of use for the Christian family,” Gill said.

He added that the villagers ransacked Yassir Masih’s home and burned 20 acres of his fields on Feb. 18. The village comprises about 2,000 Muslim families and only 15 Christian homes, he said.

Officers from Narang Mandi police station arrested Yassir Masih later than month. He and his family members told officers that Mubashir shot Imran, but police listened only to the lies of the plaintiff, Masih said.

On Feb. 19 Yassir Masih’s mother, Shamshad Bibi, went to the Narang Mandi police station to file a complaint against the Muslim villagers for attacking and looting their house and burning their crops, Gill said. Police filed a case against the attackers but so far no one has been arrested, and “all the Muslim leaders who instigated the Muslim mob to attack are still at large,” Gill said.

At the same time, Narang Mandi police have arrested not only Yassir Masih but his brothers Ashir Masih and Asif Masih, 15 and 23 years old respectively, Gill said. While Yassir Masih has been incarcerated at Sheikhupura District Jail, Ashir Masih and Asif Masih were interrogated by Criminal Investigation Agency officers and have been kept at an undisclosed location since Feb. 18.

The accused Christian’s father, Abid Masih, as well as Khalid Masih, were still in hiding at press time. Police exonerated young Faisal Masih of all charges on Sept.1. Gill said that the 13-year-old boy had moved to an undisclosed location.

Five men threatened to kill her unless her father allowed one to marry her.

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, June 16 (CDN) — Five Muslims here kidnapped and raped a Christian girl after threatening to kill her unless her father allowed one of them to marry her.

Lazarus Masih said one of his three daughters, 14, was kidnapped on May 29 by five men identified only as Guddu, Kamran, Waqas, Adil and Ali.

Police recovered her on June 6 in a raid on the home where she was being held, though the suspects escaped.

“They threatened that if I don’t get her married to Guddu, they would kill her,” Masih said. “One of them said, ‘We attended an Islamic religious convention, and the speaker said if you marry a non-Muslim or rape a non-Muslim girl, you will get 70 virgins in heaven.”

He said that when he and his wife returned from work at around 11 a.m. on May 29, their 14-year-old daughter was not at home; his other daughters had been at school and said they did not know where she had gone.

During the family’s search for her, they heard from Masih’s brother-in-law, Yousaf Masih, that he had seen five Muslim men follow her earlier that morning.

“In the morning around 7:30 a.m., I saw that [name withheld] and another girl were sitting in a rickshaw and five Muslim guys – Guddu, Kamran, Waqas, Adil and Ali – followed the rickshaw,” Yousaf Masih told the girl’s father.

Family members said the suspects took her to a house near Islamabad, where they gave her a drug that rendered her unconscious, and raped her. A medical report confirmed that she was given drugs and raped.

Lazarus Masih, who lives with his daughters and wife in Mohalla Raja Sultan, Rawalpindi, filed a First Information Report at the Waris Khan police station on June 1 against all five men. He said Guddu, Kamran and Waqas sell and use drugs.

He also contacted advocacy organization Ephlal Ministry, which along with representatives of Life for All and Peace Pakistan met with police chief Mazhar Hussain Minhas and demanded immediate action for the recovery of the girl.

“This is a very sad incident, and we will do whatever we can to recover the girl,” Hussain Minhas told them.

Devastated family members said the girl remained frightened and was not speaking to anyone.

“It is such a shame that the religious leaders teach inhuman acts,” said the Rev. John Gill of Shamsabad Catholic Church. “This incident has ruined the life of an innocent child.”

The family formerly belonged to the Catholic parish but now affiliates with a Protestant church, New Life Ministry in Rawalpindi.

DNA results match their semen samples in case filed by family of fatherless 14-year-old.

LAHORE, Pakistan, June 3 (CDN) — Forensic DNA results of semen samples in a sexual assault case show they match those of the Muslim boys a 14-year-old Christian girl accuses of raping her, according to advocacy organizations.

The girl accuses Muhammad Noman and Muhammad Imran, both 17, of abducting her from her school in Kamboh colony, Lahore, in Punjab Province, on May 6 and drugging her prior to sexually assaulting her, according to Khalid Gill, president of the Christian Lawyers Foundation (CLF), and officials of the National Commission of Justice and Peace (NCJP).

The minor, whose name was withheld, told the organizations that she was waiting for her younger sister at the main gate of S.M. Foundation School after class hours when Noman and Imran told her that a girl named Hira wanted to see her.

The girl said that she told them she was not familiar with anyone named Hira, but that she was not afraid because there was no problem meeting a girl. She told the NCJP that as she stepped off the school grounds, Noman and Imran overpowered her, tightly covering her mouth to stifle her cries for help. Later they gagged her with a band of cloth.

NCJP General Secretary Peter Jacob reported that they took her by motorbike to a place unknown to her and compelled her to consume a soft drink containing tranquilizers. Able to see but unable to move as she began to lose consciousness, she was unable to stop them as each boy raped her, she told the NCJP. She said she later became totally unconscious.

The CLF’s Gill said the boys later left her on a road near the school’s main entrance.

The girl’s father, Rehmat Masih, is deceased. Her mother, Aysha Bibi, said that she had fearfully begun searching for her and had contacted a school administration official, who said that her daughter had left the school on foot. Several Christian neighbors also participated in the search.

Christian neighbor Shehzad Masih found her unconscious on the road near the school gate and brought her home, according to the NCJP’s Jacob. As the 14-year-old regained consciousness, her mother and others brought her to the Millat Park Police Station and filed an application to register a case against Noman and Imran.

After investigating, on May 9 Millat Park Police registered a case against Noman and Imran for abducting “with intent to commit adultery.”

Although Muslims commonly commit crimes against Christians in Pakistan assuming law enforcement officials will not prosecute, the two boys were arrested on May 26. Police sent DNA samples of the semen of both Muslim youths to a forensic laboratory, and the results linking them to the crime returned this week, CLF and NCJP’s Jacob said.

A urine test indicated the girl was not pregnant, CLF and NCJP officials said.

Mother beaten on two occasions for trying to recover her; police refuse to prosecute.

LAHORE, Pakistan, May 6 (CDN) — Muslims who kidnapped and forcibly converted an 18-year-old Christian woman to Islam severely beat her mother on two occasions to discourage her from trying to recover her daughter, lawyers said.

Muhammad Akhter and Muhammad Munir on April 25 broke into the home of 50-year-old widow Fazeelat Bibi while her sons were at work and beat her because they were upset at her continuous demands that they return her daughter Saira, Christian Lawyers Foundation (CLF) leaders told Compass.

CLF President Khalid Gill said that neighbors’ calls to the police emergency number went unheeded as the men beat her in Lahore’s predominantly Muslim Bostaan Colony.

On April 18 Muhammad Akhter and members of his family had beaten her with clubs and ripped her clothes when the widow, having received a tearful phone call from her kidnapped daughter that day, went to their house to argue for her release.

In Saira’s telephone call to her mother, received at the house of Muslim neighbor Musarat Bibi, who is a constable, the young woman was crying as she said that Munir and Akhter were spreading false rumors that she had eloped with Munir, Fazeelat said. She said her daughter told her how Munir, Akhter and Munir’s sister Billo Bibi had kidnapped her, stolen the jewelry of her dowry, forced her to convert to Islam and were pressuring her to marry Munir.

At the time she was kidnapped on March 10, Saira was engaged to a young Christian man of Youhanabad, a large Christian slum on the outskirts of Lahore, Fazeelat Bibi said.

“Saira’s brothers and I were very joyful because we were about to fix her wedding date,” she said.

Previously the radical Muslim family lived next door to the Christian family. On March 10 Munir, who is Akhter’s uncle, came to the Christian family’s home and told Saira that her mother was ill at her hospital workplace and wanted to see her immediately, Fazeelat Bibi said.

“Then Muhammad Munir deceitfully abducted Saira,” she said. “It seemed as if Saira had vanished into thin air. At first my three sons and I sons searched for Saira, but our efforts were futile.”

She accused Munir, Akhter and Munir’s sister Billo Bibi of kidnapping her daughter. They have continued to threaten to kill her if she persists in trying to recover her daughter, she said. Her daughter, she added, has called her “persistently” from Charrar village saying that she has been kidnapped, forced to convert to Islam and is being pressured to marry Munir against her will.

“This also reveals that Saira has not tied the knot with Munir yet,” Gill told Compass.

The distraught mother said she approached Kotlakhpat Police Station Inspector Rana Shafiq seeking help to recover her daughter, but that he flatly refused. The inspector told her the issue could be resolved at the local Bostaan Colony meeting, she said; the rulings of such a meeting of local elders, known as a Punchayat, have the equivalent of court authority in Pakistan.

Fazeelat Bibi said that several such meetings produced no resolution to her daughter’s kidnapping, but that while present she heard the false rumor that her daughter had wed Munir. At the meetings she also learned that the Muslim men were keeping Saira at Charrar village outside Lahore.

Fazeelat Bibi told Gill and CLF Secretary Azhar Kaleem said that she was somewhat satisfied to learn at the meetings that her daughter was at least safe, but her relief vanished after the April 18 call from Saira. Her daughter told her that she had tried to escape three times, she said.

Once again the frail, 50-year-old woman sought the help of Inspector Shafiq, and again he refused to help, the CLF leaders said. Gill and Kaleem said that Shafiq was explicitly inclined to favor his fellow Muslims in the case, and that he told her to move to a Christian slum as no one would help her in Bostaan Colony.

Gill, who is also head of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance in Punjab Province, and CLF Secretary Kaleem said they believe that Akhter, Munir and Billo Bibi had heavily bribed the inspector to keep him from prosecuting the Muslims.

Shafiq declined to respond to Compass calls, and the registrar of the Kotlakhpat police station, Abdul Qayyum, said Shafiq was not available for comment.

Saira was just 2 months old when her father, Pervaiz Masih, died and her mother and three brothers moved from their native Yansonabad village to Lahore in search of a better life, Fazeelat Bibi said. She said that she began working as a sanitary worker at a hospital in order to support them, while her sons began working as day-laborers when they reached their teenage years.

Other Christians murdered in area that continues to be wracked by violence.

LAGOS, Nigeria, April 27 (CDN) — The killing of Christians in Jos, Plateau state in Nigeria continued over the weekend with two journalists and five other persons falling victim to Muslim youth gangs.

Nathan S. Dabak, an assistant editor at a newspaper of the Church of Christ in Nigeria (COCIN) called The Light Bearer, and Sunday Gyang Bwede, a reporter at the publication, were stabbed to death on Saturday (April 24) at Gado-Bako in Jos North Local Government Area along with an unidentified motorcyclist.

“The staff of the church were murdered in cold blood by some Hausa Muslim youths,” the Rev. Pandang Yamsat, president of COCIN, told Compass today. “This is clear because they have been using the hand phones of the deceased journalists and boasting that they are the ones that killed them.”

The young Muslim men have been boldly answering calls to the cell phones of the deceased journalists, he said; when a friend of Dabak called his cell phone number, an unknown voice responded, “We have killed all of them – you can do your worst!”

Dabak, 36, and the 39-year-old Bwede had left their office on Saturday morning and were on their way to interview local politician Bulus Kaze when they fell into the hands of young Muslim men, Yamsat said.

The church started a search for the two Christians that day but did not discover their bodies until about noon on Sunday at the mortuary of Jos University Teaching Hospital, he said. He added that the church was eagerly waiting for results of a police investigation.

“The security team of the church has been communicating with the police, but they are yet to make any headway on this unfortunate incident,” he said.

Burial of the slain journalists is scheduled for Friday (April 30).

In his statement on Monday (April 26), Yamsat lamented that “while efforts have been tailored towards the return of peace to the state by the military Special Task Force, it is regrettable that the state is confronted with a spate of killings.”

“The church is still mourning the death of its pastor and his wife killed in Boto, Bauchi state,” Yamsat said, in reference to the April 13 kidnapping and murder of the Rev. Ishaku Kadah, 48, and his 45-year-old wife Selina. “It is sad that it should again be left to face another brutal murder of two of their staff.”

The state branch of the Nigerian Union of Journalists also condemned the circumstances that led to the death of the two journalists, expressing deep concern over what it described as “a series of attacks on its members in recent times in the course of carrying out their legitimate duties.”

Four other Christians also were killed on Saturday (April 24) in the Dutse Uku district of Jos’ Nasarawa Gwom area in a revenge attack following the discovery of the corpse of a teenage Muslim who had been missing. Their names were not released at press time.

The four Christians reportedly died, three of them stabbed to death, when hundreds of Muslim youths rampaged throughout the area in protest.

Earlier, police reportedly exhumed eight bodies from shallow graves in a predominantly Christian village near Jos. The discovery of the bodies brought to 15 the number of corpses found in three days in an area fraught with Muslim aggression that has left hundreds of Christians dead.

Jos has become a flash-point for ethnic and religious tensions in Plateau state, which is located between Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north and Christian south. Previously hundreds of Christian villagers were struck with machetes and burned to death on March 7 in Dogo Nahawa, Zot and Rastat, three villages in Jos South and Barkin Ladi Local Government Areas.

On March 17, Muslim Fulani herdsmen assaulted two Christian villages in Plateau state, killing 13 persons, including a pregnant woman and children. In attacks presumably over disputed property but with a level of violence characteristic of jihadist method and motive, men in military camouflage and others in customary clothing also burned 20 houses in Byei and Baten villages, in the Riyom Local Government Area of the state, about 45 kilometers (29 miles) from Jos.

On Jan. 17, two pastors and 46 other Christians were killed in an outbreak of violence in Jos triggered when Muslim youths attacked a Catholic church. Police estimated over 300 lives were lost in subsequent clashes, in which 10 church buildings were burned.